modernist parentheses
by Losselen
Summary: Remus isn't the only one with the secret to hide.


**(modernist parentheses)**

"murder fades, dissolves, stay forever as the world of lies, be kept as  
final evidence, transformed forever into more than truth."

_Denouement_ by Kenneth Fearing

"Fuck," James says when he trips over his own tangled sheets, but that's what he says to everything.

Sirius is there, awake, looking at the night-dim ceiling with uncertain eyes, curtains undrawn and all. "Shut up," he whispers, hands in hair and listening for nothing but that creak and rustle of cotton sheets.

"Still up?" James sinks down on Sirius's bed, a warm weight and a flimsy anchor against the sway of the stars, and Sirius looks at him, puzzled & baffled, unsure of what to say. But he says what he means

"I've been thinking."

He's never what James expects, or cares to expect, "Bollocks, you _never_ think."

"No. It's about Remus." The name ends up being something more than what syllables can hold. "You think it'll stay like this forever?"

"I don't know Pads, you really fucked up this time."

Nothing.

Suddenly Sirius looks as if he's afraid to breathe, and James realizes that _this is real_, this tug of lone-minds, this roll of tongue, these words in stead of feelings, to be remained, to be waited, to be waited. And he is suddenly so fragile, so incomprehensible that James wishes it can be dismissed with a joke. But it can't.

James has the images burnt onto his mind and he is guilty all over again.

,

When Sirius comes it's always quiet. No sound, no moan, no grunt, nothing. It's just fabric-rustle and metal-creak, and then, a wispy, sudden hitch in breath. When James comes he's never sure of what to do, except to arch and gasp & grab onto the nearest thing so he won't be hauled away. They've forgotten to put Silencing Charms on the bed and it rasps lowly, but they're almost sure that neither Peter nor Remus hears them.

,

After morning it's nothing's-happened and never-talk-of-this-again, except they circle-walk and always come back.

'

James used to suspect that Sirius is doing this because he's trying to be rebel, and he used to hate it because he managed to convince himself that it was true. He doesn't like to be used, he doesn't the idea; no one tells him that he uses people all the time, no one tells him that he's used Lily (or tried to) he's used Peter, he's used everyone he touched. Now that he is sure he's being used, he doesn't hate it anymore and no one tells him still.

No secrets between friends.

Except.

.

Love is light, light as a feather, in case you haven't noticed. If a wind ever come its path it'll be blown away and you'll be left unanswered—that's only a secret, and not too many people knew it. But people know of this unconsciously as an incoherent feeling in their gut, and that's why they get so nervous, so restless, because they know it and they don't really.

,

Sirius can't think of James as in love with Lilly, because he himself isn't.

But Sirius has a way of bending things, he twists & twists & twists, until everything is right again and he is understanding them. He likes to think that he is selfless, but that's really an image too, the one of himself he presents everyday—in a glass case like a museum relic—but he's selfish too, and rather transparent, just like everyone else.

So when he wishes to be in love so much, he'll start believing it.

,

Remus knows their secret only because he knows everything. He doesn't say anything of course, and lets James and Sirius pretend that the only reason they won't tell Remus is because Remus already knew. Lily doesn't know the secret but she pretends that she is like Remus and doesn't say anything either.

It's quiet and awkward and biting at the Grand Hall, because James won't let Remus sit anywhere else and Sirius can't think of anything to say but sorry. But something Sirius never tells anyone is that he hates saying sorry. He hates being sorry. He hates submitting the penitent respite to Remus, because without pride he'll give away to nothing.

Night is thicker, but easier, especially when the lights are out because Sirius can, in the mask and undefined borders of his body, he can bend things to just the way he likes them.

,

Sirius doesn't think peeling off layers can be as painful as it sounds, but it is and once he is revealed, he is gone.

,

Who would have thought that a thing like love, when you really come down to it, matters so very little after all.

,

There is dust, there are cobwebs, there are sound of creepers under the foundation of the building. Sirius imagines that this is his final moment in the Shack, with or without his friends, and he imagines water turning on, showering down, spilling in, choke up. He imagines the rushy sound it makes, the rust-red of oxidized iron and the rank smell of rotting wood and mildew. He imagines every trace of them being torn away from here, every dog-flea on the threadbare bed, every wolf hair between the pillows, all the rat skin, all the stag smell. Gone, gone, gone. He is happy. He should be happy.

,

After they leave Hogwarts, they head their own ways.

,

But they're still circle-walking and they end up in the Order.

Except.

Peter.

,

See? You never expected this, did you? You won't be laughing, Sirius, because they're coming to get me and you'll be dead. You'll see.

It must be a rule that a mad end would always be caught up by mad wind, the howling kind that squeezed through alleys, as Peter rarely noticed before. He has a deep wound, fucking red now, and he is numb all over and he thinks he'll pass out soon. They'll come, he yells to the wind, and you'll be damned.

But they won't come, no one comes, and Peter is swept away forever, crumples back and falls out of the outline of his shape, and there, on that night-empty, star-forsaken street, he dies and settles into dust.

And someone else then lives instead.

,

There, too does Sirius fall back, out of sight, disbands forever and fades into mystery.

,

No one brings up the topic of James after he is killed, and Remus thinks it's because everyone is trying to be sensitive.

No one brings up the topic of Sirius Black after he disappears. Remus knows better now.

,

The only James he has now is the one in sepia-gold, the brief and curt phoenix of James's image intertwined with the images of someone else, the hologram of his real self. Remus thinks it's enough.

The only Sirius he knows now is the one in words, no moving picture or still picture, but black & white words in his mind, spinning themselves into lies.

,

Sometimes Remus asks himself why he didn't know about Peter, because he'd known so many secrets, not just his own but so many more. But in the end, he has no answer for himself and certainly not for the wind, so he decides to make maps.

Cartography is a subtle art: there is no way of getting around the tedium, but Remus works all through the night, the next night, the night after that, & maps out his friends to hang on his wall.


End file.
